


Notorious

by sabaceanbabe



Series: Victorious-Rebellious [4]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Hayhanna, Odesta, everlark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:14:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4686725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaceanbabe/pseuds/sabaceanbabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Johanna Mason takes to the roads to make life miserable for those loyal to the Capitol when the rebellion fails...</p><div class="center">
  <p><br/><a href="http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/anniecresta88/media/cover%20art%20by%20anh_zpsgmap3mhf.png.html">
      <img/>
    </a><br/>  </p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the amazing [cover](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Het_Big_Little_Bang_Challenge_2015/works/4664967) thewildwilds created for this fic!
> 
> So I managed to fall and land directly on my elbow, fracturing it pretty well, which totally derailed any writing for a few days. The gracious Het Big Bang mods generously allowed that I could post what I had completed without kicking me out of the challenge, but since I still haven't been able to complete this fic due to RL, we have agreed that it is no longer part of the challenge. You should still leave thewildwilds some love for her fabulous cover art, though!

Johanna wakes with a gasp, disoriented and frightened. She doesn’t know where she is for a long moment, but then her eyes adjust to the near-suffocating darkness and the sterile scent of the air gets through to her brain.

District 13. The would-be saviors of Panem.

She sits up on her cot, runs her fingers through her hair, and then swings her legs over the side, setting bare feet to cold concrete. Reaching under the cot for her trousers, she quickly dresses, stomps into her boots, and grabs her coat from the peg by the door as she slips out of her tiny room and into the hallway. A look around in the dim radiance of the security lights tells her that she’s alone. It’s the scheduled sleep cycle for all but a handful of people, but sleep is no longer a possibility for Johanna, not with the ghosts and the mutts and the ghosts of mutts that decided to play in her dreams. Add to that the tons of concrete and rock burying the whole mind-numbing place and she’s afraid she’ll become permanently “mentally disoriented”; if she stays here a minute longer, she might just start screaming, and that would fuck with everyone’s precious schedule.

Making her way stealthily through the sleeping bunker to one of the seldom-used staircases, only getting lost once, Johanna heads up and out into the cold December night. The exit lets out into the woods a little way from the wreckage of the old district, before the citizens of 13 made their homes underground. Katniss had shown her this particular way out weeks ago; she and her buddy Gale used it to go hunting when they didn’t want everyone in the district to know what they were doing and when. Shoving her bare hands into her pockets, Johanna crunches her way through drifts of dead leaves littering the ground and farther into the trees.

Following a trail through the woods for several minutes, it leads her to a clearing. There’s a large rock jutting up through the dirt near the edge and Johanna drops down onto it, stretching her legs out in front of her and looking up through spidery branches at the sky. The moon overhead has no competition; a brilliant jewel set into dark velvet, it glitters with the smaller gems of the stars. She rolls her eyes at her own fancy, but it’s enough to simply breathe in the cold, clean air surrounded by peacefully sleeping trees instead of suffocating stone.

That’s one of the worst aspects of living in 13: the lack of trees. It had been nearly as bad living in the Capitol, but at least there hadn’t been a schedule tattooed on her arm. With only a few exceptions, anyone going above ground here has to have an officially approved reason to be topside.

Something hits her right ankle and she startles, sending the thing jumping away with a hiss, but then it comes right back again in a mass of orange fur washed out by the moon. She leans down and offers her hand, palm down, to the orange tomcat and he gives her fingers a cursory sniff before throwing himself once more at her ankle.

“Stupid cat.” Her breath sends puffs of vapor curling into the air. Ignoring the cat’s protest – and his claws – Johanna scoops him up onto her lap and buries her fingers in his soft, warm fur. He surprises her by settling in rather than trying to take one of her hands off, and after a moment he starts to purr aggressively.

“You’re a little loud there, killer,” she tells him and he responds by purring yet louder and smacking her in the ribs with his tail. She snorts, amused, and turns her attention back to the stars, wondering if Finnick and the others camp under the same sky or if they’ve holed up in a building somewhere in the Capitol.

Haymitch is the only one who will tell her anything and even he can’t – or won’t – tell her much. It’s beyond frustrating to not know anything, to not be able to do anything. She still hasn’t forgiven herself for that training fiasco that’s keeping her here instead of in the thick of the fighting, but even the memory of that test, the water everywhere, makes her body thrum with tension and her stomach knot with anxiety. Buttercup’s claws dig into her thigh and he butts his head into her arm, reminding her that he’s here and demanding that she attend to his needs; she digs her fingers into his shoulders and he settles back in, still rumbling away on her lap.

Haymitch.

Johanna is still getting used to the new sober and clean-shaven man. He’s the only one in the district worth talking to, but Coin has him spending most of his time shuttling back and forth between Volts in the weapons department and Heavensbee in the War Room. Even Haymitch doesn’t seem to know if it’s because Coin truly wants his opinions and ideas in those areas or if it’s just to keep him occupied and out of her hair. Meanwhile, Johanna spends her time washing other people’s dirty laundry. She holds out the hand not petting the cat, half expecting to see pale and wrinkled flesh.

Johanna wants nothing more than to hit something, or maybe shoot something. She’s still surprised at how much it meant to her to be “Soldier” Mason now that she is merely “Citizen.”

Buttercup’s purring is louder, but the cat no longer kneads Johanna’s leg and she looks down at him. He looks toward the ruins of the old district with unblinking eyes and his tail twitches and then starts to thrash violently. That’s when Johanna realizes he’s not purring anymore; the sound comes from the direction of the toppled buildings and the vibration she feels rises up from the ground beneath her feet. Buttercup digs his claws into her thigh, pushing through the gray fabric to prick her skin as he growls low in his throat; it mingles with the thrumming noise, both sounds growing louder and more insistent. Abruptly he hisses and launches himself into the trees.

Johanna jumps up. “Shit!” There’s a bright glow in the sky over the bunker as approaching hovercraft light up the night. Mere seconds later, the bombs begin to fall.

xXx

Haymitch arrives in Command a little after midnight, his communicuff still bleating at him about an urgent meeting. The damn thing had awakened him from a pretty deep sleep and he still hasn’t recovered. He’s not even sure why he’s here; it’s not like Coin has any real use for him. As far as she’s concerned, none of the victors – with the possible exception of Lyme, missing since the fall of the Nut in 2 – are anything but liabilities at worst and tools at best. She seems to dislike Haymitch in particular, seeing his response to the life he’s lived since his “victory” as indefensible weakness. She’d even told him so to his face and he’d laughed, telling her he appreciated her honesty. It’s good to know where you stand.

The devil herself is standing by her strategy table, talking urgently to Heavensbee and a couple of her military advisors. He wishes Boggs were here, but then again, he’s just as happy to have someone of Boggs’ competence and level-headedness watching over his kids in the Capitol. There’s been radio silence for more than two days and he has no idea what’s happening to Katniss and Finnick, or for that matter, Peeta and Annie since Coin sent them to replace two of the Star Squad’s members, killed in what Coin had called a freak accident in the streets of the Capitol.

The only saving grace is that Johanna failed her test, so she’s still here in 13, one less person to worry about or lose sleep over. Not that she’d appreciate the fact that he’s happy she failed it. He’s well aware of how torn up she is over it, but she’s not ready yet to hear that it wasn’t her fault or that if she had more time and more care she would’ve been able to overcome the things Snow’s interrogators had done to her. She’ll never completely heal – none of them will – but she’ll learn to adapt, of that he’s sure.

Coin stabs a finger into the center of what looks at a glance to be a map of the heart of the Capitol. He’s seen the City Circle that surrounds Snow’s mansion enough times in person to recognize it with ease now.

“How can our forces be in full retreat?” she spits out. Every line of her body shouts out her rage and Haymitch just wishes he knew what caused it. Although he’s fairly sure he’s about to find out as she turns toward him. “And what is he doing here?”

Heavensbee steps closer to Haymitch, almost as though he’s protecting the victor. Haymitch has a sudden image of Coin attacking him over her beloved strategy table, the former Gamemaker throwing himself into her path, and he has to laugh at the absurd image. He’s even more amused at the sour look Coin shoots at him as Heavensbee tells her, “I called for him.”

“President Coin!” An aide shouts for her attention, pointing toward a screen that shows Beetee in the Weapons labs, looking as though he hasn’t slept in days. The bags under his eyes seem to support the weight of his glasses all on their own.

Haymitch looks from Heavensbee to Beetee and back again, more or less ignoring, at least for now, the growing chaos as more people arrive in Command. “What’s going on?”

After a moment’s hesitation – probably deciding what to tell and what to hold close – Plutarch says, “The situation is bad. Our troops are in full retreat. We thought we could pull it out, but things went from bad to worse.” He sounds as tired as Beetee looks.

“I thought the Capitol was ours,” Haymitch says, frowning. When he’d gone to his room to catch a couple of hours’ sleep, the latest report had indicated the main body of the Capitol forces had retreated as far as the City Circle and the rebels had them surrounded.

“We thought so too, until the second half of our trap came into play,” Beetee says.

“Trap?” Haymitch looks at Beetee, but the man won’t meet his eyes. “What trap?”

As though he didn’t hear him, Heavensbee continues, “We have no idea what the disposition of the Mockingjay is, at this point, nor the rest of her Star Squad.”

“The Mockingjay’s disposition is sometimes pretty surly, but what do you want from a seventeen year old? But more to the point, how the fuck did you manage to lose her?” Haymitch clenches his hands into fists to keep from strangling the Gamemaker turned rebel leader. Katniss and her squad missing? Rebel forces in full retreat? And him stuck here, thousands of miles away and in no position to do a thing to help? He ought to be used to it, but he’s not. “You tell me what’s going on, Heavensbee, including all the shit you’ve left out up until now, so I can bring those kids home, or—”

Before he could say anything else, the lights flicker and die. The room plunges into utter blackness for a handful of heartbeats and then the emergency lights kick in. Another second and the warning sirens begin.

“Status report!” Coin shouts. Something big and powerful hits somewhere up above, violently enough to shake the walls and send dust raining down from the ceiling.

“Status report?” Haymitch repeats as he drops into a chair and begins to laugh. “I’d say we’re fucked.”


	2. Chapter 2

The air is thick, hard to breathe. Explosion on top of explosion, the bombs fill the night with light and sound, make the ground shake and shimmy. Clouds of smoke billowing up from fires underground as well as burning trees blot out the stars.

Johanna ran when the bombs started, instinctively heading toward the bunkers that had been nominally her home since they’d pulled her out of the Capitol almost three months before, but once the initial fight or flight impulse gave way to rational thought, she’d turned around and sought shelter to wait it out. A shallow cave, little more than an outcrop of stone, was both close enough and far enough away.

She huddles in that bit of shelter now and waits. There’s nothing else she can do. She can’t just leave, not yet. Not until it’s over. Not until she knows Haymitch’s fate, and Beetee’s. With Finnick and the others in the Capitol and Johanna in 13, not knowing if they’re alive or dead, the two men in that bunker are the only family she has left. If there’s a chance that they’re alive and in need of help, she can’t leave.

More bombs fall. Hands tightly over her ears like Finnick’s Annie, Johanna waits. She ignores the tears that streak the soot on her cheeks.

How can anyone survive that?

xXx

Haymitch fights his way through the crowds of people running toward the lower levels and the bomb shelters there. The klaxons add to the chaos, as do the emergency lights, flickering and threatening to die out with every new explosion from above. He moves with purpose in the opposite direction from all the others, heading toward the single female quarters; once he hooks up with Johanna, they’ll find Beetee. He’s fairly certain neither of them are part of the mass exodus to the bomb shelters. He can’t help but wonder how many died when the first bombs - which included bunker busters - fell and how the Capitol was able to fuck with 13’s early warning system.

Plutarch and Coin had remained in Command, the safest place in the complex including the bunkers, and both expressed surprise when Haymitch walked out. Coin had even tried ordering him to stay – why, he didn’t know – but Plutarch had said something to her when Haymitch gave them the finger and kept walking. Whatever the man had said, Coin had let Haymitch go with no further protest.

He arrives to find Johanna’s door shut; he opens it – there are no locks in 13, not for the rank and file, anyway – only to find the room empty. The bed looks slept in, the covers tossed mostly to the floor, her boots and jacket missing.

“Well, shit.” He has no idea where to look for her, since he doesn’t know where this block of housing is supposed to go in emergencies, so he heads back the way he came and turns toward Weapons Research and Development and Beetee. While he walks, he taps in a query on his communicuff, receiving an automated response; he’ll read it when he hits Weapons.

“Have you seen Johanna?” he asks Beetee as soon as he walks in the door – this one has a lock, but Beetee had hacked it long since to allow Haymitch to enter, the lock deactivating for him as soon as his communicuff was in range.

Beetee looks away from his computer monitor, glasses flashing with reflected light, obscuring his eyes. “Is she missing?” he asks.

“She wasn’t in her room.” Haymitch looks down at the tiny screen on his wrist. Johanna’s housing block is in a bunker on Level 26. “I’ll check for her in her assigned bunker.” He takes a step closer to Beetee and his computer as the man taps at his keyboard. The view on the monitor changes to the woods outside and a sea of white uniforms and bright explosions. The lights flicker overhead with the impact of yet another bomb.

“They’re using bunker buster missiles.” Haymitch nods; he already knew that. “The explosions are at the entrances.” He looks over his shoulder at Haymitch. “All the entrances.”

“We have a traitor.”

“So it would seem.”

xXx

It’s still dark, the moon high in the sky, drowning out the stars, when the last bomb falls. Leaving the meager protection of the little cave, Johanna slowly makes her way toward the bunker. Smoke from burning trees and plastics fills the air, making it hard to breathe the closer Johanna gets. She tears a strip of fabric from the bottom of her government-issue shirt and wraps it around her face, covering her nose and mouth in a weak attempt to filter the air. It would be better if the cloth was wet, but the air temperature is just too cold. Stuffing her bare hands into her jacket pockets, she wishes for the millionth time she had thought to bring gloves.

Voices propel her into hiding - Peacekeepers, well-armed, their helmets filtering out the toxic smoke. Just thinking about what might be burning to send that choking cloud across the land makes her need to cough, but she swallows it down, hoping the sound of their own boot steps through the dead leaves and brittle branches will mask what little noise she can’t stop. But when she has to breathe or pass out, one of the Peacekeepers, closer to her than the others, notices her quick gasp for air.

“Did you hear that?” The opaque surface of his helmet faces her hiding place beneath pine boughs that droop low to the ground. Without thought, her hand reaches for an axe that isn’t there. Closing her eyes for a moment, Johanna stretches her hand farther, finds a fist-sized rock with a bit of an edge. She grips it tightly in cold fingers, wondering just what the hell a stinking rock is going to do for her against armor and bullets.

“Hear what?” one of his fellows asks.

The first Peacekeeper takes a step toward Johanna’s hiding place when a streak of orange shoots across his path with a loud, uniquely feline yowl.

“Never mind. It’s just a stupid cat.” He raises his rifle to shoot at it, but the second Peacekeeper stops him.

“Don’t waste your ammo.”

Johanna waits until the sight and sound of the Capitol troops dissolve in the distance before following Buttercup’s example, minus the yowl.

xXx

When the Capitol forces break into the bunker, the soldiers of 13 are waiting for them. For the first hour or so, they manage to hold the Peacekeepers at bay, but even the weapons enhancements Beetee developed over his months in 13 are no match for the sheer numbers the Capitol brings to bear on the rebel district. It’s a battle of attrition and the one thing the forces from 13 can’t replenish is their people. By ones and threes and dozens, the citizen soldiers fall and those who remain fall back, taking their toll on the white-armored Peacekeepers with well-aimed shots into the chinks in that armor, but it’s not enough.

Haymitch and Beetee monitor the fighting from Beetee’s domain, and when the cameras in the elevators and the corridors that lead to Weapons go dark, Beetee calmly hands Haymitch a shotgun from beneath his workspace, taking up an oddly shaped device of his own.

“What the hell is that?” Haymitch asks, one dark brow rising. The thing is chrome and blue and the grip seems to form itself to Beetee’s hand.

“Just a little something I’ve been working on.” Beetee snorts a laugh. “Here’s hoping it works.”

Taking up a position across from the door and behind a heavy metal cabinet, Haymitch just shakes his head at the older victor before turning his attention to the shotgun in his hands. It’s heavier than he would’ve expected, not that he’s handled all that many firearms in his life, what with the Capitol’s disapproval of hunting in the districts and their downright negative attitude toward putting weapons in the hands of victors in general, but he has used a shotgun a time or two. Old Cassius Barclay and his wife had relished living dangerously, back in the day, and had enjoyed both teaching Haymitch to shoot and watching the fruits of their labors. Haymitch had sort of enjoyed the shooting; the rest of his time with the pair, not so much.

“What’d you do to this thing?” he asks and Beetee wheels over to where Haymitch stands.

Taking the shotgun, he breaks it open, ejecting a pair of shells. He holds one up for Haymitch to look at. “I’ve modified the payload on these. Incendiary, but only if they penetrate something with a temperature above ninety degrees.” He laughs again, ending on a giggle. “I didn’t want to burn down my own office if they hit the bookshelves.” Loading the shells back into the shotgun, he snaps it closed again and turns it over.

“What good is an incendiary shell going to do if doesn’t burn ‘til it’s inside a body?”

Beetee peers at him over his glasses. “They burn from the inside out. Somewhat of a microwave effect.”

“Oh.” Haymitch shudders. Looking at Beetee, listening to that annoying, endearing giggle, it’s hard to remember how efficient he really is at murder. Winning his Games had been anything but an accident.

“There are two triggers, you see,” Beetee says, pointing. “The forward trigger is for the upper barrels, the rear for the lower barrels.” Until he said it, Haymitch hadn’t noticed the thing has four, two above and two below. The lower barrels are just as long as the upper, but more narrow, making the shape of the gun almost triangular.

“Do I even want to ask?” Before Beetee has a chance to answer, the door explodes inward in a blinding flash of light, an almost deafening blast of sound, and the two men are in a fight for their lives.

xXx

Johanna doesn’t at first recognize it when the sun rises in the sky, obscured as it is by clouds of smoke and the glow of flames. Those flames still burn too hot for her to approach the entrances, even if she could make it past the encampments of Peacekeepers who had moved in once the bombs stopped to surround the remains of the underground complex. They don’t even bother to mount patrols once the one she ran into before dawn returns to camp, knowing that no one escaped the flames and the rubble blocking the entrances. She’d moved in as close as she dared and now once more she watches and waits, breathing in the acrid stench of the smoke billowing up from underground.

Hours pass, the morning sun rising in the sky to become the afternoon sun before the Peacekeepers flood the entrances with chemicals to douse the flames and cool the surfaces. Not long after, they begin to dig through the rubble with mechanical earth movers. It’s early evening when the first prisoners emerge, the soot and ash blending in with their gray clothing. None of them are people Johanna knows.

Near sunset the Peacekeepers bring forth a group from below, just as coated with ash and soot as the others, but this group includes a man in a wheelchair. Johanna can’t be sure, given how far away she is, but she thinks the man with him is Haymitch. The constriction around her chest eases. If he’s alive now, he’s smart enough and cagey enough to remain that way. But he’s most definitely in the hands of the Peacekeepers and there are a lot of them. There’s not a chance in hell that she’ll be able to get either him or Volts out of there. She doesn’t want to leave them, but there’s nothing she can do to help them, not from here and not if she’s captured, too.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, the sound lost in the breeze as she silently slips away.


	3. Chapter 3

Her first night on the run, Johanna doesn’t dare risk a fire. The smell might not attract any attention, but she can’t even be sure of that - clean wood smoke smells a lot different from the plastics and cloth and other things that made up the smoke from the destruction of District 13. For fuck’s sake, those bastards from the Capitol had somehow even made granite burn; she doesn’t want to know what kind of chemicals might have been in that smoke. No, she won’t risk a fire. Not yet. She makes camp, wishing she had more than just the clothes on her back. The best she can do to keep warm that first night is to burrow into the needles and other detritus beneath a stand of spruce. The trees’ limbs are dense enough to form a sort of natural shelter.

She wakes in the middle of the night curled up on her right side, a warm spot on her left hip: Everdeen’s damn cat. Those feline eyes stare at her, unblinking, picking up the light of stars and moon through gaps in her spruce shelter and reflecting it back at her like dim headlights. When she settles back into her prickly nest, Buttercup settles his head on her ribs, his tail still twitching in agitation. As he relaxes, that tail slows, eventually ceasing its restless motion. Once the cat sleeps, Johanna drops off again, not exactly relaxed, but feeling less alone.

She wakes gasping, still in the grip of nightmare confusion, hounded by her arenas and her failed stress test, her torture at the hands of the Capitol, the recent bombardment, and overlaying it all the crushing guilt of not being there for her friends, of literally walking away from them. Buttercup is gone. Cheeks already wet from tears, she allows herself to wallow in it before angrily dashing the tears away. When she sets out, heading more or less toward the west and home, she leaves behind no trace that she was ever there, something her long-dead brothers had taught her for fun when she was just a sprout. She ignores the rumble in her belly that reminds her she hasn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours.

xXx

Everything hurts. His muscles, his bones, even his hair aches. Haymitch feels worse now than he ever did during 13’s thrice damned detox program. At least then there had been some kind of alleged medical professional making sure he didn’t drop dead or something. Rubbing at watering eyes with the heels of his hands, he can’t focus past the sluggish light of the midday sun through its filter of smoke. On top of that, he’s _fucking_ cold. The damn Peacekeepers didn’t let any of their prisoners stop to put on appropriate outdoor clothing. At least Beetee has a blanket for his legs. Haymitch is tempted to steal it.

A scuffle on the other side of the makeshift pen draws his attention. Coin stands apart from the others, her hands raised in surrender but defiance showing in her near colorless eyes even from fifty feet away. A Peacekeeper wrenches one of her arms behind her back while another holds a pistol at arm’s length, aimed at her head. One of Coin’s lieutenants says something, but Haymitch is too far away to hear it; Coin herself remains silent, staring coldly at the man with the pistol as if daring him to shoot her.

“She’s got balls,” Haymitch observes. “I’ve got to give her that.” He debates internally whether he’d be warmer standing just as he is or shoving into the tiny space between Beetee with his wool blanket and a tree that must have been old during the Dark Days. In a compromise, he leans back against the tree, his hands shoved deeply into his pockets for warmth.

“They’re sure to execute her,” Beetee replies, “balls or no. Heavensbee, too.” He’s watching the same bit of drama where the former Gamemaker is gesturing with both hands as he explains something earnestly to the Peacekeeper who seems to be in charge. Haymitch figures he and Beetee are much better off where they are, away from whatever it is that Coin and her people - Plutarch included - are spewing. He doesn’t want to get any of that on him - oddly enough, he doesn’t want to die.

xXx

She lands hard on her elbows. The frozen ground is rock hard, but there are enough dead leaves and shriveled, desiccated plants to cushion her landing. Worming a hand beneath her, hoping she doesn’t have the more dangerous end, Johanna grabs her prize and rolls, bringing her other hand up to wring the rabbit’s neck before it has a chance to bite her. When she sits up, the poor rabbit twitching in her hands, warming them even as its own body cools, her gaze lands on a bit of orange fur at the side of the deer trail she’d been following through the forest.

“Get your own dinner,” she tells him and Buttercup opens his mouth in a silent meow.

Shoving up to her knees, she carries the rabbit by its back paws to the small cave she’d earlier chosen for her camp that night. Although calling the rocky indentation a cave might be a bit too generous. At least it’ll cut the wind.

An hour later and she has the rabbit skinned and cleaned, its lightly steaming entrails in a small pile beside her fire pit. She doesn’t have anything to cook them in, but the cat probably won’t mind. The smell of roasting meat makes her mouth water and her stomach rumble as she turns her makeshift spit.

It’s been three days since the fall of 13. So far, the weather has held. She can deal with the cold, but if it takes a turn for the worse, with ice and snow, or worse, freezing rain, she might not be so lucky. It’s been a long time since Johanna has had to camp out, finding her own food and shelter, the arena notwithstanding. The worst creatures she has to worry about here are bears and coyotes. And Peacekeepers, but she hasn’t seen a white uniform since the previous morning. They, at least, are mostly concentrated around human habitation, something Johanna is avoiding.

She watches a snowflake drift on a random path to land on the arm of her jacket, lingering in crystalline perfection for half a second before it melts, not even leaving a darker spot on the gray fabric to tell where it was. Another falls. And another. She huddles closer to the fire, feeling the feather light flakes hit the skin on the back of her neck, melting immediately. She’ll have to make her way into the more populated areas sooner than she’d like.

xXx

The hovercraft’s engines thrum, a weighty vibration through the bulkheads that’s both felt and heard. Haymitch is half asleep, relaxed far more than someone in his position and with his history should be, but sheer exhaustion will do that to a man. The hovercraft is the same one used year after year to transport tributes to whatever sick arena awaited them that year. The last time he saw it was just a few months before, when he’d said goodbye to Katniss and the boy for the second time. He’d thought to never see either of them again; it wasn’t the first time he’d thought that. Maybe their charmed lives still hold. Maybe his last two tributes, the only ones who hadn’t come home in body bags, were still alive somewhere in the Capitol. He’s not likely to ever know.

Someone kicks the sole of his foot, straight on and hard enough to cause damage, if he weren’t wearing thick-soled combat boots. Haymitch opens his eyes to meet the pale gaze of Romulus Thread, former Head Peacekeeper of what was once District 12. The man hadn’t served as Head long, and his brief tenure was a career-killing disaster no matter how you look at it.

“You don’t look like much of a VIP now, Abernathy,” Thread growls and then turns to the young man standing behind. “Make sure those restraints are as tight as you can get them. We don’t want any chance he can escape.”

Thread’s subordinate moves to tighten already too-tight straps, and Haymitch chuckles. He can feel the others in the transport turn their attention toward him, but that just makes him laugh harder.

“Yeah, ‘cause I’m such a flight risk up here.” He rolls his eyes so hard it’s almost worthy of Johanna and settles back into the jump seat, closing his eyes once more in a clear dismissal calculated to enrage Thread. If he’s lucky, the man will have a stroke and no one else will have to deal with his petty self-importance. It’s disappointing when the only response he receives is another wordless growl, so Haymitch pokes at the beast again. “Congratulations on that promotion, Thread.” Sadly, Thread allows that shot to pass by as well.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” the woman strapped into the seat to his left asks.

Haymitch glances over at her. He doesn’t know himself why he did it. Maybe he’s tired of hiding in the shadows. Maybe he’s tired of self-important men exerting whatever power they have over him. Or maybe he’s just plain tired. Maybe he’s just lived too long.

“Damned if I know,” he tells her and shuts his eyes yet again, closing off the dull gray interior of the former tribute transport.

If only he could as easily close off the parade in his head of those he’s let down over the years.

xXx

Johanna stands on the shore of a frozen, snow-covered lake, a vast expanse of flat and featureless white. She can’t look at it for long; even with the cloud cover, she’ll be snow blind in just a few minutes. The lake stands between her and home. Well, the lake and about a thousand miles, maybe more, of terrain filled with wild animals and men and women still fighting a war that had ended days before, they just don’t know it yet.

She hasn’t run into any fights yet, just found the aftermath. Bodies littering the ground, surrounded by equipment or weapons too damaged to be worth salvaging, even for her. All she has is the folding knife she left her room with a week ago. On the bright side, a couple of the dead were about her size, so she’s better dressed - combat boots instead of shoes, a thick field jacket over her own for added warmth.

But traveling on foot from 13 to 7 is insanity, if it’s possible at all. She has to find a better mode of transportation. Walking across the frozen lake, even just cutting off some of the edges, will cut out a hundred miles or more from the journey, but it won’t do her any good if the ice is too thin or if she can’t find sunglasses. Camping on the lake’s surface in a fishing camp is all well and good, but fishing camps have shelters. Johanna has nothing.

“They say freezing to death’s not a bad way to go,” she says aloud. But Johanna Mason is nothing if not a survivor, and she’s not ready to just lie down and die just yet.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who read this chapter before September 13, 2015, the ending of the chapter has changed.

The hovercraft arrives in the Capitol in the middle of the night. Strapped in as he is, Haymitch can’t watch out the window, but when the craft banks to come in over the heart of the city and the President’s personal airstrip, he sees the glittering lights through the windows on the opposite side. From that height and the darkness, the Capitol is beautiful. He can’t smell the stench of corruption or see the rot beneath the surface. If he didn’t know better, he’d be hard-pressed to find any sign the war had touched it at all. But then the hovercraft banks further as it makes its approach, and he sees gaps in the jewel patterns and colors of the city’s lights, dead spots where the engineers haven’t yet restored power. Oddly enough, none of those dead spaces are near Snow’s mansion.

There’s hardly a bump when the hovercraft touches down, but the woman beside Haymitch gasps. He hasn't really looked at her before, but now he sees by the pallor of her skin and the droplets of sweat that bead her forehead to compete with the dusting of freckles across her nose, the wideness of her brown eyes that she’s terrified. He’d like to reassure her, but it would be a lie. Besides, he’s still strapped in, just as she is, so there’s not much he can do expect maybe to crack a joke, and the last time he did that, it didn’t seem to do much more than make her afraid Thread might lash out at her when he was done with Haymitch.

“What will they do to us?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

Haymitch watches as armored Peacekeepers begin to unlock and escort those prisoners at the front of the craft out into the night. A whiff of more or less fresh air drifts their way, bringing with it the smell of exhaust fumes and fried foods from the streets that surround the president’s airstrip.

“You a part of Coin’s inner circle?” he asks, knowing full well that she’s not. He never saw her at any of the meetings.

She shakes her head, and a lock of gray-streaked red hair falls loose from behind her ear. “I’m just a maintenance tech.” A Peacekeeper wheels Beetee down the center aisle and they disappear through the door to the outside.

“You should be fine,” he tells her. He’s not so sure that will be the case for himself and his fellow victor.

xXx

Johanna’s eyes snap open. Holding herself still except for the hand moving incrementally to grasp her knife, she listens to the darkness, so different in the dead of winter than in the height of summer. There! The same noise that woke her breaks the silence again. Something larger than Buttercup moves toward her, disturbing long dead leaves and snapping brittle twigs, although to give him or her credit, they’re smart enough to vary the rhythm of their footsteps.

A shadow blots out the stars. Her fingers tighten on the handle of her knife, her thumb on the button to release the blade. She’d be a lot happier with an axe. Or better yet, a Peacekeeper’s sidearm, which has so far eluded her. There are a few clips in her pack, gathered from the sidelines of skirmish sites, but the rebels are too efficient in cleaning up everything potentially useful, and the Peacekeepers have a long-standing policy to leave no one behind. Still, she can’t pass that ammunition up. If she can’t use it herself, she can always barter it.

The shadow leans down, reaching for Johanna’s bag. It’s empty after a day of more traveling than hunting - between the two of them, she and the cat had eaten everything they had gathered or caught - but the shadow, long and lanky, wouldn’t know that. She waits until all his attention is focused on her bag and then explodes from her nest of leaves and needles.

With a startled shout, the shadow - a boy of maybe sixteen - drops the bag and falls backward, scrabbling away from her, hands and feet slipping on the layers of detritus soaked by ice and melting snow.

“I’m sorry! I just wanted some food!” Standing over him, knife in hand, Johanna kicks her bag out of the boy’s reach.

“How many more?” she stabs out.

The boy looks confused for a heartbeat or three, but then replies, “I’m alone.” He says it so absolutely she knows he’s not just talking about that moment. She’s well acquainted with the sound of loneliness.

Taking a step toward her banked fire, she prods it with the toe of her boot, collapsing the wood and sending sparks into the still air along with a spiral of smoke. A flame springs to life, dances along the edge of a one-by-four that had no doubt once been part of a shipping pallet.

She studies her prisoner for a moment in the growing orange light, those wide eyes practically glowing as the flames grow brighter and higher, his body thin almost to the point of emaciation, the hollows beneath his cheekbones prominent, incongruous in such a round face. His skin is brown and so are his eyes; they dart, wary, feral, from Johanna’s face to the fire to the knife she still holds in her right hand. His coat is at least two sizes too large for his frame, cinched tight around his waist.

 _Hungry?_ she thinks. _Kid looks more like he’s on the edge of starvation._ Aloud, she asks, “Why don’t you go into the town that’s just over that rise, if you’re so hungry?”

No longer trying to escape, he sits up. “It’s a company town.” His tone is matter-of-fact, like the term should mean something to her. And maybe it does, somewhere in the depths of her memory, but some of what the Capitol did to her in captivity messed with her memories. There are gaps that she’s not sure will ever come back, burned out of her by wires and electrodes.

“Company town? What the hell does that mean?” She suspects it has something to do with loyalty to the Capitol; the boy confirms that suspicion with his next breath.

“They’re all loyalists.” He spits as though the word leaves a sour taste in his mouth. While Johanna might agree with his disgust, she can’t help but feel he’s kind of an idiot for expressing his opinion so openly with a stranger.

“And you’re not.”

He stares at her, the muscles in his jaws working. His eyes seem to glitter in the fire’s light and she realizes that he’s fighting tears. “They killed my family. My brothers worked in the mills. They were part of the crew that tried to drive the Peacekeepers out of the town when the arena exploded.” Blinking rapidly to fight the tears, he stops talking and Johanna doesn’t press him. When he gets his voice under control again, he says, “The Peacekeepers killed everyone in the mills.” Melting snow soaking through his clothes, he has to be cold, but he’s lost in his memories, seeing only the past, nothing that’s in front of him. “My parents and I ran. My mom wanted to go to the nearest town. She thought we’d be safe with her sister.” He starts to rock back and forth. “But when she told my aunt and uncle about my brothers, they turned us in.” Johanna could see in his eyes, in the taut lines of his too-thin body, what had happened to his parents. He meets her gaze. “No, I’m not loyal to the Capitol.”

“What makes you think I’m not a loyalist?”

He cocks his head to the side and frowns. “You’re Johanna Mason, aren’t you? You and the other victors, you were there when the Mockingjay started all this. You were her allies.”

She stares at him for a moment, her brain feeling sluggish as she tries to make sense of what he’d just said. “Shit.” If he had recognized her that quickly and not under ideal circumstances or visibility, then she’s going to have to come up with a plan if she’s going to go into the town and make some kind of arrangements to get around or across the lake.

xXx

The trials begin the day the hovercraft from 13 lands in the Capitol. Teams of two - one Peacekeeper and one prep specialist - arrive to take each prisoner from the roped off area near the landing pad to the Remake Center in the Hunger Games complex. The trials will be televised, mostly for the benefit of the citizens of the Capitol, who apparently need reassurance that the Mockingjay and her followers will no longer be able to murder them in their beds.

They polish Haymitch’s olive skin until it seems to glow, removing the ravages of alcohol and District 13’s detox program. Between that and 13’s strict meal plans, when he sees his reflection in a window on his way to the trial venue, it looks like they took at least a dozen years off his age. In his gray prison jumpsuit, he looks dark and dangerous, just as he had twenty years ago, when the wealthy and powerful had wanted him almost as much as they want Finnick now. With a shudder, he clamps down on the revulsion that fills him along with the memories of that time, memories he’s done his best to burn out of his brain with alcohol over the years, along with those of a parade of dead tributes.

The Peacekeepers take him to a large room and seat him toward the center of a row of chairs behind a low wall. There are half a dozen rows of chairs behind him that fill as more and more gray-clad prisoners arrive with their white-armored handlers, among them Alma Coin, Plutarch Heavensbee, and Commander Paylor from District 8. His heart leaps at the sight of Lyme, tall and unbowed. She had come so close to defeating the military might of District 2, but in the end the Capitol had provided enough reinforcements and equipment to fight off the rebels. No one had known if Lyme had survived the chaos that followed, but she’s here now, alive and well; she nods when she sees him, and Haymitch returns the gesture.

Last of all, the Peacekeepers escort Katniss Everdeen, the face of the revolution, to the last remaining seat in the front row, between Haymitch and Heavensbee. Her hair is short, thin in some places where scar tissue from burns keeps it from growing back in properly. Covered from head to toe in a long-sleeved red jumpsuit, the scars visible on her hands, her neck, her face pick up some of that red to take on the aspect of flames curling around her body, a permanent reminder that she was the Capitol’s Girl on Fire. She moves stiffly into her seat without a word, without a change of expression. But a moment later, Haymitch feels the touch of her hand on his, the pads of her fingers rough with scar tissue. The motion hidden from the crowds that fill the room beyond by the low wall, he takes Katniss’ hand in his.

He doesn’t know where Peeta is - he’s not one of those on trial, nor is he in the room as an observer - but one of Haymitch’s kids is here with him. It’s not necessarily a good thing that she’s here, but Katniss is alive and physically whole, and he feels some of the fear of not knowing the fates of his loved ones fade away.

xXx

Plumes of smoke form lazy spirals as they rise through the cold air from dozens of chimneys. The smoke merges with the gray clouds overhead that promise more snow before morning turns to afternoon. The snow already on the ground is heavy and wet. It wouldn’t be so bad if they had snowshoes, but as it is, walking is a trial. Not to mention the fact that there’s a trail that couldn’t be easier to follow if it was marked with signs that read “we were here, but now we’re going here.” Johanna pulls the hood of her jacket up over her head and ties it tight before leaving the shelter of the pines to trudge through that heavy, wet snow to the town below.

“Hey!” Levi calls after her. “You’re not going into the town!”

She stops and turns around. If she didn’t think she’d fall flat on her ass in the snow, she’d keep walking backward. “I am definitely going into the town.”

The boy jogs to catch up with her, making it look easy with those long legs. “But the Peacekeepers…”

“We just watched the damned place for the last hour and a half. There are no Peacekeepers there.” She turns back toward the town. In addition to telling her his name, she had dragged details of his story out of him a few hours ago, learning that they’re in District 8, that the riots that had ultimately killed his brothers were in the mills in the main town about sixty miles north along the lakeshore. The town at the bottom of the hill was where his mother’s sister had lived, but the Peacekeepers had taken her and her husband into custody, too, when they’d taken Levi’s parents; Levi’s father had fought back, resulting in death for both him and his wife. Levi himself had run, hiding in the woods for several weeks, avoiding Peacekeeper patrols, but those patrols had moved out of the area a few days ago.

“But what if they recognize us?” It’s a possibility, but Johanna has no intention of walking all the way back to 7, and she needs to do something to change her appearance enough to plausibly deny being the only female victor from District 7. She figures bleaching out her hair should be enough, and bleach shouldn’t be that hard to come be in District 8, of all places.

“They won’t recognize us.” She stops again so she can look at him. “Do you look like the same kid they ran out of town a couple months ago?”

“Well, no.” He looks down at his body and the way his clothes hang from him. That’s another thing they need to do when they’re in town - get Levi some food.

She laughs at herself then. _When did I become we?_

“But even if they don’t recognize me,” he continues arguing, “what if they recognize you?”

Johanna snorts. “I lie.” When he looks confused, she clarifies. “Johanna Mason? No. I get that all the time. It’s really fucking irritating.” Laughing at his expression, she starts on her way once more. After a few seconds, Levi follows.

xXx

Plutarch Heavensbee is the first to die. His trial lasts only a day. President Coriolanus Snow is his only judge. The evidence presented against Heavensbee is overwhelming. None of it’s surprising, except maybe for how long he had deceived Snow and his fellow Gamemakers. Plutarch Heavensbee was born in the Capitol, had been raised on the Games and had never had any ambition other than to be a Gamemaker, but something had happened when, as a junior Gamemaker, he’d gone on a scouting expedition for the 56th Hunger Games. That expedition had taken him to the ruins of District 13, and when they’d chosen a different arena venue that year, he’d gone to 13 again for the 62nd Games. Somewhere along the line, he’d met Alma Coin and she had recruited him.

As he listens to the verdict, Heavensbee grows pale and begins to sweat. Haymitch can see the raw fear in his eyes, the way his hands shake, but it isn’t until Snow reads his sentence - death by hanging - that he collapses. Peacekeepers carry him from the courtroom before returning the rest of those waiting to stand trial to cells beneath the Remake Center. Haymitch recognizes them as former stalls for the horses of the tribute parades.

Heavensbee is executed the following morning. Alma Coin’s trial begins immediately after his execution, thus setting a pattern for the days to come. Nearly all those convicted of treason hang the morning after their trial ends, and the cycle continues as the trial begins for the next prisoner. This continues until only the victors remain. Finnick and Enobaria join Katniss, Lyme, Beetee, and Haymitch behind that low wall; Peeta and Annie Cresta appear in the audience, also wearing Gray jumpsuits, although Haymitch doesn’t know why they’re not on trial as well. Once Peeta shows up in the courtroom, Katniss seems better able to focus.

Almost three months to the day following the rebels’ defeat, the trials of the victors who fueled the rebellion into a conflagration that had engulfed the entire country begin. Unlike the trials that came before, which ended in Paylor's execution that morning, each victor's trial begins on the heels of the one that came before, starting with Silke from District 1. Haymitch meets Peeta's gaze in the gallery before the boy looks away to focus on Katniss. The trials will move in district order, ending with District 12 and the Mockingjay.


End file.
